fashion for fashion

For young people, going to a fashion event is like being reborn. This is why they cannot wear their usual clothes. Fashion events are like the few moments in life when you can dress up. Everything is allowed. You will never be considered as crazy or ugly but interesting and full of insights. So, they should organize instant fashion shows with the people invited to the event. It would be really worth it.

I've seen some mind blowing outfits at Bread&Butter Barcelona, London Fashion Weekend and 080 Fashion Barcelona. Comparing them, I can say it was about cool '80s for B&B, '80s and Victorian Era influences for London and '70s vintage style for the Catalan fashion event, 080.

As for the latter, everybody, I mean everybody was vintage. I was wondering what year are we and if I was unconsciously forced to get in the time machine. Unfortunately, some sides of the vintage trend had down shifted beauty. I mean, not everybody looks good wearing high waist pants, vintage glasses, leggings or shortened pants with a view to the socks. Now, ugly is cool.

To understand more of what I am talking about check out flickr/fashion4fashion.

flavors of Barcelona

When you are new in a city like Barcelona, you suddenly loose the reference points in life. "To whom or what do I belong to" question conquers your state of mind. Slowly but inevitably you fall in love with the city.

Now I have "my favorites" (barrio, placa, Sunday coffee bar etc), I taste, I feel and I smell the soul of this amazing city every day. It is a place where you can never get bored and I am living the most spontaneous moments ever. So, today I will serve you 3 barrios, situated near the center, each having a typical flavor.

El Raval is my favorite because of its diversity. Ex-Chinese neighborhood, el Raval is now a mixture of old, new, stinky stuff, cool museums, pakis, international phone booths, scary people & very good bars.

Smell\Kebab
Taste\Lime
Color\Fuchsia - because of its craziness
Highlights\best second hand and vintage shops with workshops included, Casa Camper, MACBA, skaters, CCCB, Madame Jasmine - my very favorite

Barrio Gotico is the aristocratic version of El Raval. Charming and elegant.

Smell\pastry
Taste\red wine
Color\cherry red
Highlights\Harlem Jazz Club, small boutiques, funky clothes shops, small art galleries and antique shops.

El Borne is the sweetest barrio in Barcelona. It is packed with cool restaurants, small bars where you can have the time of your life and shops with expensive but extremely beautiful hand made stuff.
Smell\cotton
Taste\crepes with cinnamon
Color\coral
Highlights\El Xampanyet, Creps al Born, wine bars, hand made stuff shops.

As one of my friends says, you cannot know the real face of a city if you haven't lived there for more than 4 months. I will soon celebrate 6 but I am sure that the good stuff is yet to come.

LEGO world

Don't you just love LEGO? It is the game of my childhood, together with Barbie dolls of course. I am talking about the Lego I was playing with 15 years ago and not the one they are selling now. Let's call it the classic Lego, in which you only have bricks, a board, windows and doors and the rest is up to you. God, I would still spend hours playing with this!

Seems that all this retro&vintage trend has got really deep under our skin. I would firmly like to add that this is not a boy game as I heard people talking. Why do you think they have pink bricks and boards? Or more precisely, why would Lanvin launch a campaign with LEGO? I tell you, for the fun and happiness of nostalgic girls like me. Lanvin print campaign is inspired by Lego and by Pacman. I think there are lots who will get excited about Pacman too. I am just a Lego fan. Photographs by Hartland Villa.

Not only big fashion houses got the LEGO feeling but also hand made designers introduced this little pieces in their collections. Look what I found in Portobello Road, London.

And I couldn't help myself from buying these broaches. I wear them with pride.

dandy girls

I was one of the lucky ones who got in at Bread&Butter Barcelona trade fair thanks to Trendwolves. If you are hungry for fashion trends, this is one of the best places to hunt them.

Looking at the next year's collections, I realized that the huge gap between yin and yang is no longer there, as the feminine and the masculine present in all of us seem to get along just fine for once. Designers have already presented a more masculine type of woman, bold enough to go for three-piece suits, or trenches with a masculine cut but this year, I saw for the first time the true revival of the dandy look for women. As I like it very much, I had the curiosity to dig for this trend's birth.

Once, the word dandy was a nickname for Parisian&British overly-groomed men living in the 18th-19th centuries. The charm of the dandies lied in their obsessive care on aesthetics, elegance and their noble aspiration to be sublime. Baudelaire was deeply interested in dandyism, and memorably wrote that a dandy aspirant must have "no profession other than elegance ... no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons ... The dandy must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he must live and sleep before a mirror." So that the others dress to live, he lives to dress. Nice, isn't it?

Beau Brummel is the most famous dandy of all times. He won fame in the early 19th century for his fastidious hygiene and inconspicuous dress: fitted navy jacket, crisp white shirt, and plain trousers, at a time when men of his station were partial to lace, brocade, and powdered hair. He was what we would call today an innovator, more than a trendsetter.

George Sand's reputation came into question when she began sporting men's clothing in public (19th century) — which she justified by the clothes being far sturdier and less expensive than the typical dress of a noblewoman at the time. In addition to being comfortable, Sand's male dress enabled her to circulate more freely in Paris than most of her female contemporaries could, and gave her increased access to venues from which women were often barred. Also scandalous was Sand's smoking tobacco in public.

Romaine Brooks did her most amazing work from 1920 through 1924, painting portraits of women in blacks and grays. Brooks’s story reminds me that you may not know it at the time, but amazing things are just around the corner, you just need to get there. She is best known for her images of women in androgynous or masculine dress, including her self portrait, which is her most widely reproduced work.

Marlene Dietrich is famous for her dandysim: "I dress for myself. Not for the image, not for the public, not for the fashion, not for men."

Then was Sade.

As you can see, with time, dandyism became more than just a relic nickname for classy gentlemen. The lavish elegance so emblematic to Oscar Wilde’s writings has been reinvented to be one of next season's trendiest fashions for high class girls. One of my favorite is Janelle Monae. She is a perfect dandy of our times. Masculine shoes, bow tie, shoulder straps, she's got it all!

Take a look at Junya's Watanbe S/S 07 collection. It is incredibly dandy and beautiful.

As for products, fashion house Givenchy has launched along with makeup artist Nicolas Degennes a dandyism homage makeup collection including a lip & chic gloss shaped as a manly chained pocket watch. I love it.

We shouldn't forget that dandies, fops, and swells were also blurring the gender lines, both in dress and behavior. So, a female dandy could also be a dandy with no worries. Like the T. Rex lyrics say Girls will be boys / and boys will be girls / it's a mixed up world.

out in the street

Barcelona is one very alive city. Doesn't matter if it's 9 in the morning or 3 in the night, you are never alone on the streets. Moreover, you can have the best of fun without spending a lot of money, spontaneously joining "botellon" parties (a custom that takes place mainly in the Spanish nightlife, which involves the gathering of a large number of young people to drink beverages previously acquired in shops (usually supermarkets), to listen to music and talk) in the small placas singing along with the talented guitar, harp, flute, sax singers. They make you feel you are their special public, engaging you more and more with every song.

So, if you find yourself late at night, walking on the streets without anything interesting to do, you can always go to Placa del Sol and witness special gimmicks, like the girl in this picture is doing, or just sit and relax, listening to people putting all their sorrows and happiness in touching instruments.

more pics: Gracia by night

RA DIOHEA_D

Last year, rock innovators Radiohead shot a video for House of Cards. No cameras or lights were used. Instead two technologies captured 3D images: Geometric Informatics and Velodyne LIDAR. Geometric Informatics scanning systems produce structured light to capture 3D images at close proximity, while a Velodyne Lidar system that uses multiple lasers is used to capture large environments such as landscapes. In this video, 64 lasers rotating and shooting in a 360 degree radius 900 times per minute produced all the exterior scenes.

Are you among those who understand each and every word of what I just said? I must admit I am not that good when it comes to technical details though I like to think of myself as a technology oriented person. When I first saw this video I felt really outdated and I was wondering what did I do all this time. Where was I?

Imagine that in 2050 all the information generated until know (since the existence of Earth) will be doubled. I wonder if in a few years time I will still be able to understand something about this world or I will have some kind of 'grandma' syndrome. So this, cloud computing, nanotechnology and what's next?

Shot by James Frost of Zoo Films, the video can be viewed here: HouseOfCards

feeling books

What's your favorite bookstore? Think of its colours, smell, sound and of how do you feel there. Hmmmm... Ok, stop! Now imagine that Ciclic is 10 times better than that.

I don't know if you are the same but I could spend days inside bookstores, scanning every book, wanting to buy each and every one. This could really be a problem because I wouldn't have enough space to store them in my house and not even money to buy food.

Ciclic is a design/architecture/art/photography books heaven. It was lovely listening to Dave (the owner) how he talks about books like they were his babies. You can always find him there, chatting with the customers and recommending the best titles. He changed my perspective on books. The most interesting insight was about books as means of expression for the repressed artist, the one that has no other way to show his art, as it is considered to be tabu/too weird/aggressive/sexual to come out otherwise. And as if this wasn't enough, they also have a really well supplied video shop.

Wrapping up, even if you are a book fan or not, Ciclic should be among your landmarks in Barcelona.

le cool

I started to read Lecool magazine as soon as i got to Barcelona. Being new in such a city is not an easy thing to do so, Lecool was there for me when i didn't know where to start from. This is how i got to the most amazing&crazy parties, concerts, shops in here.

Last week I had the chance to visit their headquarters and found out the story behind this cool magazine. Sincerely, i found what i was expecting. Behind such a cool thing there can't be anything else but cool&special people.

They work in an old precious building from Barrio Gotico and hold their meetings in a lovely patio, remembering me of Eixample's hidden gardens.

As every success story, it started with someone's desire to show stuff. Desire to share good places with friends and continuously pursuing for "the best" one. Slowly, Lecool became a good friend in the know, edgy but not elite, speaking to trendsetting readers, having the "knowledge for a better living" kind of vision.

Passion is the name of the game...cause that is how they choose which event should be published. So let yourself caught!

mi barrio

I find it incredible how things show up when you pay special attention to them. On your daily way home try not to look down but up, try not to think of what to do when getting home but look at the places and people that pass by and try to find out their hidden meaning. You will discover a whole new world.

Check out what I found/ mi barrio pics